Shin-seiki wrote:Wigs' theory, of course, is that the salvage operation did get something back that was physically Yui, but that the soul that was "fixed" into it was Lilith's. (This does raise the question of why Rei I apparently came into existence as an infant, since she looks to be 4-5 years old in 2010)
That is a very good question. The other is, of course, the pigmentation issue.
In any case, there are plenty of hints that Rei is, one way or another, the (possibly inadvertant) result of Yui's Contact Experiment, and the subsequent salvage operation.
But how on Earth would Lilith's soul end up in the wrong body unless she (A) for some reason WANTED to leave her original body or (B) was transferred there intentionally. I'm not really sure I buy this "accident" business. As you yourself have pointed out, Gendou speaks of Rei as though she was created with a purpose (his version of 3I, naturally), not as if she was a fortuitous accident!
In the case of Rei, I personally think it makes much more sense if she was created after Gendou had time to acknowledge his defeat (i.e., he wasn't going to get Yui back "the easy way") and come up with another plan (Instrumentality). The timeline allows for this possibility... But I won't get into it now.
"Extracting Yui's genetic material" in advance, in anticipation of creating Rei and sticking Lilith's soul in her, seems to fly in the face of the idea that what happened to Yui was a total shock to Gendo
I was going more with the possibility that there was a random 'sample' floating around that Gendou might have used. In sci-fi, whenever you want to make a clone of someone who is dead, you can always find a sample if you look hard enough!
Originally posted on: 21-Sep-2004, 17:34 GMT